Fantano Fires Back at Halsey: 'I'm Not the Devil
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- Halsey quote-tweeted Anthony Fantano on Sunday after he made a snarky comment about his old review of her 2024 album "The Great Impersonator," calling him a "raised-by-4chan edgelord bully [culture]" and saying her least memorable song would outlast anything he does with his life.
- Fantano's October 29, 2024 YouTube review on "The Needle Drop" gave the album a 1/10, calling the tracks "bad Halloween costumes, musically-speaking" and accusing the record of "main-character syndrome."
- Fantano told Variety the review had nothing to do with Halsey's cancer diagnosis but "everything to do with how bad I feel her various takes on inspirations that she tries to pull from and impersonate are, and how weak the songwriting is."
- Fantano rejected the misogynist framing, noting he withstood harassment from Adin Ross's edgelord fandom for defending Doechii and from Tory Lanez fans for standing with Megan Thee Stallion after Lanez shot her.
- Fantano turned Halsey's "edgelord" label back on her by resurfacing her 2020 tweet wishing the building housing Pitchfork would collapse — apparently unaware it was One World Trade Center, the building built to replace the Twin Towers after 9/11.
- Fantano described himself as a leftist who supported Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, and claimed he was calling Israel's attacks on Palestinians a "genocide" before Bernie was.
Why it matters: Fantano is publicly rejecting a two-year narrative pushed by Halsey and her fans that his 1/10 review was motivated by her cancer, and by resurfacing Halsey's own One World Trade Center tweet he has escalated a simmering artist-critic dispute into an open back-and-forth with both sides now trading receipts.
